What's the difference between merciless and ruthless?

Merciless


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute of mercy; cruel; unsparing; -- said of animate beings, and also, figuratively, of things; as, a merciless tyrant; merciless waves.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Sri Lanka mounted a merciless final assault on the Tamil Tiger insurgency in 2009 .
  • (2) And up there, looming over it all is Zynga, social gaming's Ming the Merciless.
  • (3) He attacked, battened down the hatches on his serve and was merciless in the tie-break, levelling the match with a well-placed volley.
  • (4) Pyongyang reacted angrily when The Interview’s plot first became public and promised a “resolute and merciless” response if it went ahead.
  • (5) Where we already have the electoral numbers, our political vengeance has been merciless against the GOP; witness California after its electoral dalliance with anti-immigrant policies or Mitt Romney’s disastrous 2012 campaign .
  • (6) Gerrard had been mercilessly taunted again by Chelsea’s supporters and he had played as if determined to turn the volume down.
  • (7) But, despite such incidents, many will see the latest episode as some sort of karmic revenge for Letterman's often merciless take on the moral lapses of others.
  • (8) The Stoke supporters mercilessly booed the Welshman’s every touch, presumably for his reluctance to accept Ryan Shawcross’ apology for breaking his leg at the Britannia Stadium six years ago, and there was also some unsavoury and shameful chanting by a section of the home fans, who sang: “Aaron Ramsey, he walks with a limp”.
  • (9) Celeb bombed, and the critics were merciless, so I had wondered if that was why Enfield withdrew from our screens.
  • (10) It was the fasting month of Ramadan and as mercilessly hot as a desert city in high summer could be.
  • (11) Like some of those R-rated comedies that go down very well in the States, they don’t work here and don’t get released.” The Interview stars Rogen and James Franco as two journalists charged with carrying out the killing of Kim Jong-un, a storyline which prompted North Korean officials to complain to the United Nations in July and prompted state media warnings of “merciless retaliation”.
  • (12) With international lenders at the EU and IMF demanding that Athens step up its austerity drive - or risk losing the funding that is keeping its debt-stricken economy afloat -- President Carolos Papoulias told the visiting delegation: "Up until now, we've been receiving a merciless lashing.
  • (13) I’m afraid you’ve lost my trust.” HSBC chiefs face Margaret Hodge at her most merciless Read more She went on: “I really do think that you should consider your position and you should think about resigning and if not, I think the government should sack you.” Fairhead has been a non-executive director of HSBC since 2004, and was made the chair of the audit and risk committee – which bore responsibility for governance and compliance across the global bank – in May 2007.
  • (14) Always a contrived fiction, this sequence juxtaposes a poignant fantasy of a fully fit presenter with the merciless world of hard news.
  • (15) Remember those embarrassing bills for wisteria clearance at the young Conservative leader’s home amid the expenses debacle of 2009, and how these were lopped away by a merciless assault on the more shameless claims of various knights of the shire?
  • (16) Not even the cameras from the media that were capturing the unfolding scene were enough to deter the circus owner from pulling a gun and mercilessly beating us.
  • (17) Sheng Keyi , meanwhile, turns a mercilessly ironic eye on modern Chinese life, particularly the difficulties faced by women in a hypersexualised culture and the insecure economic life of migrant workers.
  • (18) The brief flurry of liberal street protest in 2011 and 2012 was ruthlessly snuffed out by the Kremlin, and many have suggested that, far from a liberal revolution, the most likely revolt in Russia is the “senseless and merciless” Russian uprising of which Alexander Pushkin wrote.
  • (19) In the 13th century the Cathars put up a strong defence of their beliefs and territory against the merciless persecution meted out by the Albigensian crusade.
  • (20) It’s happening to Christians now right across the Middle East and Africa, and the dangers of not speaking up have been made clear since the Paris attacks, when innocent people were gunned down mercilessly while shopping for food for the Shabbat [Jewish Sabbath].

Ruthless


Definition:

  • (a.) Having no ruth; cruel; pitiless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) AB InBev has cut costs ruthlessly as it has bought up companies around the world, including Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of US beer Budweiser.
  • (2) As Greece pleads with its eurozone creditors for more time in meeting its fiscal adjustment targets, Dombrovskis is a fierce champion of surgical austerity applied quickly and ruthlessly.
  • (3) Rather than ruthlessly efficient, I have found them sweet and a bit hopeless."
  • (4) This thread ran through his later writings, which focused particularly on questions of the transformation of work and working time, envisaging the possibility that the productivity gains made possible by capitalism could be used to enhance individual and social life, rather than intensifying ruthless economic competition and social division.
  • (5) "Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raúl Castro , it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican Congress member in Florida, told the US secretary of state, John Kerry.
  • (6) But Hilton insists critics are wrong to see the group as ruthless youngsters who meet purely to further their own careers.
  • (7) This is how powerful a hold it has over them.” Mossino, who works with refugees and asylum seekers as well as victims of trafficking, says that in the past decade the trade in Nigerian women has become a hugely profitable and ruthless criminal industry, controlled largely by Nigerian gangs that took root in Italy in the 1980s.
  • (8) On 12 September 1980, the head of the military, Kenan Evren, sent tanks rolling through the streets of the Turkish capital and installed a ruthless military government.
  • (9) The "consultation" and "informed consent" the reports insist must take place before the project goes ahead are a sick joke in a region in which dissent is ruthlessly crushed and people are imprisoned and tortured simply for speaking their own language.
  • (10) She is also waiting to hear if she has won a second Olivier award, this time for her role as the ruthless Hollywood agent in The Little Dog Laughed, the play that transferred from Broadway to the West End last year.
  • (11) A boss on some astronomic pay packet may be held back by shame from paying his cleaners too little relative to that, but emotion will not get in the way of ruthlessness if the process all takes place behind the veil of some corporate contract.
  • (12) "What is clear is that they are as ruthless as any Islamist group or terrorists anywhere in the world," said Antony Goldman, a west Africa risk analyst at London-based PM Consulting.
  • (13) The often confusing circumstances that led to their courts martial and the ruthlessness of their punishments only fully came to light with the publication in 1989 of Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes's history Shot at Dawn .
  • (14) If there was reason to be worried following five successive defeats, their worst run of the century, they showed no sign of panic during a ruthless attacking performance which guarantees they will spend Christmas in the top six.
  • (15) She was ambitious, and Colonel Gaddafi has always promoted ruthless people.
  • (16) Every couple of years, evidence emerges to underline the unparalleled nature of the state onslaught and ruthless rule-breaking to overcome resistance in the mining communities, bought at a cost of £37bn in today's prices .
  • (17) The footage underscores the ruthlessness of fighting in Pakistan's border areas, where the army has also faced allegations of massacres.
  • (18) Philip French championed Boyle's career from the outset, describing his debut feature film, Shallow Grave , as "a good piece of storytelling... Hitchcock would have admired its ruthlessness and cruel humour."
  • (19) In the past decade, European migration was used as a sort of 21st-century incomes policy in Britain as employers ruthlessly exploited migrant labour to hold down wages – which have since been cut in real terms for four years in a row as a result of the crisis.
  • (20) But we can all probably do without Fifa's "fair play in marketing" lectures, which clothe commercial ruthlessness in the language of sporting decency, apparently oblivious to the impression given by wallpapering every stadium with signs that push BP or declare "We proudly accept only Visa".